Bad Man's Gulch
by Max Brand

The Adopted Son: "The Adopted Son" was Frederick Faust's seventh published work of fiction. It appeared in 1917 in the October 27th issue of All-Story Weekly under the pen name Max Brand. The story was featured prominently on the cover by way of a photo of Francis X Bushman and Beverly Bayne, who starred in the film version of "The Adopted Son" that same year. "Read it all here. See it on the screen," announced the caption. From the beginning Faust was seen as a gifted writer who was marketable to a large audience.

Billy Angel, Trouble Lover: By the 1920s Faust's output was prodigious and would continue to be so through the 1930s. "Billy Angel, Trouble Lover" was one of twenty-three short novels and stories and thirteen serials to appear in 1924. It was published in the Western Story Magazine issue dated November 22 under the George Owen Baxter byline. What makes the short novel rather unusual is Faust's use of the heroine, Sue Markham, as the point of view character. It is through her eyes that we meet Billy Angel, the rascally hero who finds refuge in Sue's café when he is wounded.

Bad Man's Gulch: "Bad Man's Gulch" made its first and only appearance in Western Story Magazine in the issue dated July 17, 1926, under Faust's George Owen Baxter pseudonym. It was one of twelve short novels published that year, all in Western Story. "Bad Man's Gulch" is a powerful story about a reformed gunman, Pedro Emmanuel Melendez, who arrives in the lawless mining town of Slosson's Gulch armed with the philosophy that "the right thing is just to drift, and you'l land lucky or unlucky, just the way that everything was wrote down for you when you was born, or maybe before that." But can he just drift when he meets up with Louise Berenger who, along with her father, has discovered gold and fallen prey to the desperate and predatory miners of the gulch?